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911 operator helps dad deliver baby

A Waukesha County newborn is alive and well thanks to a calm and collected rookie 911 dispatcher who helped guide the parents after the baby was born quickly at home.

WISN 12 News reporter Mike Anderson was there as the dispatcher got the meet the child he saved.

Nolan Larson came into this world the hard way three weeks ago -- in his mom and dad's bedroom. He wasn't breathing.

"OK, I got him crying," dad Bobby Larson said to the dispatcher.

"I need you to find a dry towel and wrap him in it. OK, make sure the mouth of the baby is cleaned out," Waukesha County 911 dispatcher Jeff Poff said.

On Thursday, baby Nolan, his three brothers and mom and dad personally went to the Waukesha County Communications Center to thank Poff for his calm, clear professionalism during the birth.

"I can't thank him enough. I mean, it was courageous to have a calm voice on the other side of the phone and I couldn't have done it without him," Larson said.

For Poff, it was all in a day's work. He's only been on the job a few weeks and is still in training.

"That was the first in-progress medical call I took since I started on the floor, and it's very intense when he says, 'My wife is having the baby. She's not in labor. She's having the baby,'" Poff said. "I mean, you go from zero to 1,000 mph in a matter of half a second," he said. "So when the baby wasn't breathing, it's back to the training again, and it's, 'What's next?' There's always something you can do to help things end the right way."

"You know, there are days when you wonder why you do your job, and then there are days when the wonder just speaks for itself," Anderson said.

The training for dispatchers in Waukesha County is six weeks in the classroom and six to eight months in the actual communications center, where Poff is working now.

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